FALLOUT

2 More Puerto Rico Officials Fired After Warehouse Discovery

Puerto Rico’s governor ousted the heads of the housing and family departments a day after removing the emergency management agency director.

The heads of Puerto Rico’s housing and family departments were fired on Sunday after the discovery of a warehouse filled with emergency supplies dating back to Hurricane Maria in 2017. Gov. Wanda Vázquez removed Housing Secretary Fernando Gil and Department of Family Secretary Glorimar Andújar after she fired the director of Puerto Rico’s emergency management agency, Carlos Acevedo, on Saturday. “There have been actions by government officials that have been completely unacceptable,” the governor announced. She said the decision came after meetings with her administration’s leaders Sunday morning. “They weren’t able to personally tell me specifically where these centers were located, what they contained and whether an inventory was completed,” Vázquez said. The series of swift fallouts came after a viral Facebook video on Saturday showed angry people breaking into the warehouse stacked with pallets of water, cots, baby food, and other supplies in the city of Ponce. The governor said she spent “several days requesting cots and water,” adding, “If I had known that those supplies were there, I would have demanded that they be taken out immediately.”